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Espace Sculpture

Bill Vazan Exploring The Limits of Sculpture James D. Campbell

Un certain Montréal sculpté (suite et fin) Montreal Sculpture: From a Certain Perspective (continuation and conclusion) Numéro 21, automne 1992

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Citer cet article Campbell, J. D. (1992). Bill Vazan: Exploring The Limits of Sculpture. Espace Sculpture, (21), 42–47.

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Exploring the Limits of Sculpture

James D. Campbell

ver the course of more than thirty years, oriented artist now working in Canada, his oeuvre has always revealed a highly sophisticated social Bill Vazan, Observed, 1990-1992. (Detail). OMontreal-based artist Bill Vazan has estab­ 15 engraved granites. 1,5 x 6 x 4,8 m. lished himself as an important practitioner of con­ and environmental conscience and has demon­ Installation in Agnes Etherington Gallery, ceptual, photographic and land-oriented art. Argu­ strated a deep understanding of the issues at stake Queens University, Kingston, Ontario. Photo : B. Vazan. ably the most important conceptual and land- in conceptual and land-oriented art. More impor-

42 ESPACE 21 automne / fall 1992 tantly, it has attempted to explore the limits of given stone (in his sculptures) or the skin of the Vazan's is a cosmogonie act. One sculpture. planet (in his earthworks). Going where no one has might suggest that each line the From works of international significance and gone before, he etches there expressive lines in artist routs in the surface of the rock scope in the late 1960s, such as the global linkup millenia-old matter; lines which project us beyond is a contemporary recital of the cos­ projects Worldline and Contacts, through his con­ the mundane limits of the present tense, back into mogonie myth. In effect, each time ceptual photographic projects and earthworks, and the plenitude of primordial time. In so doing, he that he willfully circumscribes the culminating in his most recent sculptural (routed effectively lets free an inhering spirit from the stone mute stone with the immanent rock) and drawing works, Vazan's oeuvre as a that really functions as an archetype — for him and expressiveness of his line — some­ whole has always represented a conscientious for us, his viewers. times coming back to where he attempt to change the condition of being here and In the snaking lines graven in this living rock are started, full circle, as it were — that to push forwards the frontiers of what sculpture is. haunting images, primal petroglyphs and atavistic stone begins to speak, in a sense Vazan addresses the panglobic factuality of cul­ sigils which bespeak a time when mark-making was taking the artist and his viewers ture in a human-centred universe and, most impor­ magical by virtue of being invested with the power right back to the origin of the tantly, he acts out of a profound sense of respect of anticipation; with sympathetic magic, and with world. for the natural environment. He has used rocks in primordial wonder. Each stone that Bill Vazan exe- his conceptual sculpture over a period of many years (such as Rock Alignments & Pilings (1963) and the Balance series (1971-74). His more recent recourse to a routing technique transforms them into sculptures per se with real symbolic value. One should stress at the outset that Vazan started his career as a painter but it was not long before he found it necessary to reach beyond what became for him the claustrophobic limits of the painting plane into the world of our concrete lived- experiences. Painting was simply too cloistered an endeavour; he wanted to realise possibilities that it could neither realise nor contain. He wanted to connect with our actual and possible experiences in what has been called the 'life-world' — which is nothing more or less than the world in which we already live. Virtually from the outset of his concern for the 'life-world,' Vazan realised the boundlessness of its horizon: the awesome potentiality not just of the body and its kinesthesis but also the role of myth, magic and the imaginai for the making of art. Vazan began executing his mature and histori­ cally important works in the late 1960s. While an analysis of the full scope of his endeavour obvi­ ously lies outside the parameters of the present essay, it is worth noting that his global linkup pro­ jects such as Worldline still represent a genuinely humanistic paradigm of cross-cultural communica­ tion and discourse. In one of the more insightful texts written to this date on Vazan's work, Paul Heyer, an anthropolo­ gist, characterized Vazan as a contemporary "cos- mographer". Heyer defined cosmography as a "mixture of science, art and philosophy that deals with the whole order of nature" and went on to suggest that Vazan is "concerned with a human centered universe."' This is still correct. All of Vazan's efforts as a creative artist have been, in effect, to educate his viewers concerning the potentiality — and, of course, the potential vulner­ ability — of the natural world now so much at risk; to reinstitute a long lost compact between ordinary man and the cosmic order he inhabits. This has f::V '- •.-'••• had the effect of making us more sensitive to the natural phenomena and unseen forces that affect In routing the rock; in articulating it; in subordi­ every facet of our daily lives. nating it to his own intentions but working with, Bill Vazan, Black Nest, 1992. rather than against, its grain; in guiding it towards Engraved granite. H. : 2,59 m. II. the fullness of an archaic expression still resonant Installation: Tamworth, Ontario. Photo : B. Vazan. Bill Vazan's cosmogony is envisioned anew each today — in other words, in lending it a voice and a and every time he penetrates the epidermis of a form adequate to express wholly human meanings,

ESPACE 21 aulomne / fall 1992 43 eûtes makes us a living witness to channel its spirit without forsaking its natural pres­ pretty much intact. Because our own imaginative the cosmogony. One could con­ ence. Vazan successfully unleashes a force that propensities are brought into play, the images that strue the stones as maquettes for resides in latency in the living substrate of rock. The enliven these objects have no finitude, only an our globe, and the routing its gir­ rocks he uses bring a history with them to his endea­ unending depth. dling. Vazan's act is a reactualisa­ vour; they carry unutterable millenia of attrition, tion of that mythical moment when process and change. Indeed, their very existence as III. the archetype was revealed for the a material to be used is itself, as Mircea Eliade avers, Bill Vazan has an abiding understanding of and first time2. a hierophany: incompressible, invulnerable, it is that respect for the imaginai and a desire to share that In terms of Vazan's rocks and which man is not.4 understanding with the observer. He acts as our drawings, we can argue that a cos­ Vazan's stones become something more than guide into a primordial world rife with atavisms mogony is reproduced in each and stones, more even than aesthetic objects. They have and archetypes, and makes these immediately every one of his constructions. A acquired an atavistic voice. Vazan impregnates his accessible to us. "new era" begins, in effect, with rocks with a quality of primeval life through working Vazan as a creative artist has learned how to the routing of each rock. Each rock with, rather than against, their innate properties and help his viewers develop a sensitivity towards the represents an absolute beginning. traits, whether pink granite, limestone or quartz. The imaginai and to enter into a compact with it. He We can also argue that it is this symbolic shape or phenomenal resonance of a is able to teach and guide us into a relation with continual creation that renders him given genus of rock becomes a starting point, the imaginai because it is a terrain he knows inti­ contemporary with the mythical reflecting the depth of Vazan's own affinity for and mately. He knows the topography and the sign­ moment of the beginning of the familiarity with the material. posts. He is conversant with the access roads and world and that his creativity is a Such a resonance is never sacrificed by the artist the border-crossings. He clarifies the imaginai by very real attempt to return to that as he works the rock; rather it dictates the parame­ using images that remind us of those that emerge singular moment — the singularity ters of his working methodology. His respect for the from the surface of a waking dream: images, pic- of being — in order that he might phenomenality of the rock — and the phenome­ tographs and symbols that always point beyond continually regenerate himself as a nology of making — always enjoys primacy. Vazan themselves. Where do they point? To a time creator. He shares in the sense and works with the outer, more epidermal layer of the before attrition; to a space that precedes the clois­ mystery of that moment which is rock surface. He never strips it down to the point tered urban spaces of today. To the therapeutic unfathomable for most of us where its materiality becomes secondary. His well- value of myth in a de-mythologised world. And today.3 But here is no refusal of delineated 'markings,' while well-nigh permanent in finally, and perhaps most importantly, to the history, no effort to spurn an a relative sense, are themselves subject to the relent­ authentic voices of the Ancestors who have been archaic past. There is only an less attrition of time. now all but silenced in Modernity. Thus, his work intent to perform an archeology Furthermore, the brute authenticity of the stone is a catalyst for and itself contingent upon a rela­ that might help us understand his­ qua stone enjoys real primacy over — and perhaps tionship between real and imaginary worlds. tory better — and ourselves better. transcends — the innate transience of its status as an The imaginai cannot and should not be There is only the desire to re­ aesthetic object. It imbues that latter object with reduced to the merely conceptual. The latter does establish contact with "being". magical power, with the sensibility of archaic man, not supplant the former, and the former resists the Vazan dramatically brings to the with the sense of a world unfettered by the often taxonomy of the latter. It is not necessary nor is it foreground of our consciousness malign technics we have inflicted upon ourselves in advisable to subject Vazan's pictographic, graven the long forgotten value of mythi- modernity. images to the finalistic interpretation and ener­ cisation, a value held sacrosanct The very routing of the stone reflects kinship with vating taxonomy all-too-common today. This sort by our archaic forebears. a primordial act. One senses Vazan's respect for the of willfull reductionism is both self-defeating and While there is something of an stone itself, his desire to bring to a state of manifes­ superfluous. One should instead recognise the "archaic ontology" in Vazan's tation its inherent attributes. Paradoxically, this value of metaphor, and the inviolable nature of endeavour, he is adamantly a late helps open our own empathie compact with it — as the imaginai. This recognition is brought on by 20,h century person. Vazan suc­ actual rock, as aesthetic object and even as celestial the work. cessfully reprises concepts of being archetype — perhaps because we never lose sight of Vazan amplifies images that arise out of myriad and reality from a largely forgotten the genuine materiality that has been strengthened contexts, including folklore, myth, archaic life primordial past. This is the by the artist's manner of working. and timeless human emotions and gestures. authentic meaning of his oeuvre. What happens in this 'empathie compact' is an Through an open framework of and for the imag­ But he uses a syntax and sources instant journey, or better, an instantaneous connec­ inai, he nurtures an imagery that functions as a that are very much of the present tion between the symbol (the engraved stone sculp­ catalyst to change the condition of being here. — and inflected with a premoni­ ture) and the thing symbolised (an archaic world His images are restless chameleons, real poly­ tion of our shared future. that can be reached by the embodied imagination morphs, moving from site to site in micro- and Vazan tries to dynamically that the rock addresses directly). macroscopic depth worlds by virtue of a timeless bridge both past and present in a Palpable atavisms surge up in the imagination. vocabulary anchored in the universality of the paradigmmatic creative gesture. The imagination is as much a place as is the context symbolic. This mythic-symbolic language ensures Each stone that Vazan works has from which the rock was removed by the artist in that specific images always transcend the quo­ its hierophany enhanced through a the first instance. The synchronicity between imag­ tidian terrain of brute facts. The sculptures them­ host of interventions which are inai contexture and sculptural context is so seamless selves, given their polymorphism, never resolve respectful of the materiality and that we transpose ourselves there with alacrity. into static entities, but embroider their own demonstrate a somatic intimacy The stone sculpture is the sign-vehicle for some­ universe. that is pervasive in the trajectory of thing else; another reality altogether, one in which The creative process begins with the choice of each snaking, rhythmic line. His we can move only by virtue of the motility of imagi­ rock. Vazan chooses only those rocks that he methodical subtractions from the nation. In this it shares something with the shaman's intuits will be promising ones for his purpose. rock mass never detract from the materials: bone, stone and skin. Like them, matter These are the rocks which possess a palpable aura dignity of the stone as one thing in here is at the mercy of the imaginai, which informs of both time past and being present; rocks that one world, but rather preserve and and transforms it even while its materiality is left have suffered the effects of the millenia, but have

44 automne / fall not been silenced; remnants of a lost world that predates human inhabitation, on the other. Our These restless ghosts graven in live on in the present and which are redolent of communion with the etched rock frees up its time-worn stone have a stubborn the wonder of telescoped time. inhering archetypes. Vazan believes that human capacity to haunt. We recognise There is something inherent in the symbolic consciousness is an integral part of the universe the faces that stare out of the topography of Vazan's work. It secures a sense of and his work makes us one with the stone. The physiognomy of the rock-face as the archaic natural landscape in which, say, the rocks have a primary appeal to the very restless­ being nothing more nor less than Delphic Oracle was located — that 'towering ness of our hands, our predilection for searching our own. cauldron of blasted rock'. If there are spirits in out patterns of meaning in the porous face of Vazan's project is not these stones, it may well be because they still stone. addressed to nor contingent upon evoke oracular vestiges of the bicameral mind.5 Touching is, then, of primary significance in the synchronic authority of a Car­ The famous oracle of Apollo at Delphi was coming to terms with what Vazan's stones might tesian subject. His work is not marked by a strange cone-like structure called the mean, quite aside from their pictographic identity, anchored in nor the outgrowth of omphalos or navel. It stood at what was believed as as we decipher them. the tradition of Western subjecti­ to be the center of the earth. It was made of Vazan makes the mute stones speak by virtue of vism. Here is no mute meta­ stone.b Vazan's huge rocks of awesome tonnage his relentless routing, and the powerful petro- physics of presence. Vazan's literally dwarf us and annex their spaces or rather our spaces. They weigh on the body and gently coerce us into circumnabulating them, coming to terms not only with their immense girth but with their complex graphic petroglyphs. This is also true of his earthworks and their surface cuttings. The geoglyphs there stake a claim on our motility. The rock becomes an edifice which carries the implicit promise of language. As we decode the graphic representations there, whether wholly abstract or partially figurative, the sculpture is transformed into an oracle, and begins to speak eloquently of other times, other places and other peoples. Times, places and peoples perhaps beyond our immediate ken, but never beyond our imaginative or empathie reach. At their best, Vazan's stones make a powerful statement not about their materiality, but about their own phenomenality and the nameless spirit we project into them; the archaic yet strangely topical and beguiling life we grant them in the looking.

IV. Thus far, we have discussed the imaginai aspect of Vazan's work. However, Vazan's routed rocks also possess a tactile dimension that enhances their physical presence, primordial aura, and imaginai potential. Vazan's sculptures are profoundly expressive to the sense of touch; each has a plenary unit of meanings. As we trace the linear rifts across the surface, it is as though we are reading a braille that draws upon our potential for empathy. We feel the features of the face-construction in the petroglyph that Vazan has carved there, but we also sense their spiritual-existential meaning. Feeling as well as seeing attunes us to the primor- diality of the endeavour, as well as something of the spiritual strength to be found (or rather felt ) therein. The smaller stones are eminently tactile objects which compell us to touch their surfaces. The roughness or smoothness of the surface, the cold­ ness, the unyielding presence of the rock qua rock, its implement or tool-like character, and the glyphs he leaves there. Through tracing a tangled primeval resonance that cloaks the living rock — skein of deliberate absences over his surfaces he Bill Vazan, Burning Stone, 1987. Engraved these are communicated to us immediately as creates a palimpsest of unforeseen presences: basalt. H. : 4,26 m.. Tel Hai Sculpture Park, first-level perceptual information. sometimes fey but never frivolous, always expres­ Israel. Photo : B. Vazan. Vazan's work opens the door to a wholly sive and never mute, restive and never static human world, on the one hand, and a world that entities.

ESPACE 21 automne / fall 1992 45 glyphs are atavistic; they hearken elled surfaces. So there is no spectre of Cartesian New Physics, Superstrings, Grand Unified Theory, back to a time when the tradition closure here. Its observation and incorporation of drawing upon a host of scientific fields and dis­ they are ostensibly situated the surrounding world is acute. Vazan has said to coveries. He is an artist fascinated with such within did not exist. me on more than one occasion: "We as a species things as black holes, wormholes, quantum Since old stones are used, their will exist only as long as we observe". 'ghostliness' and chaos. primordiality is a literal fact. The For instance, a 'wormhole' is a recent develop­ petroglyphs etched into their sur­ ment in physics, a notional shortcut through faces, with their deliberate crude- We have discussed something of the specific spacetime, whereby different parts of the same ness and anti-decorative spirit, experience of the work and tried to convey its spacetime enjoy far closer proximity than they emphasise that primordiality. The particular resonance as sanctifying an older, more ordinarily do. Spacetime is treated as a two- fact that a router — the product of archaic world that is nevertheless relevant to our dimensional sheet folded through a third dimen­ a technological society — is used experience of the world today. There is a paradox sion and passage between the two points is far does not advertise itself. We think here, for Vazan draws on sources from the more rapid through the wormhole than through of the magnificent Mayan stone cutting-edge of contemporary science. His ordinary space.7 Vazan has seized upon this con­ carvings, with their deeply chis­ sources are varied and include such things as cept in rocks which depict the wormholes on either side of a given rock, suggesting their pas­ sage through its interiority and out the other side and the notion that the holes are really passing through incommensurable and uncognizable real­ ities accessible only to the imagination. Vazan practices an 'anthropic' approach to his endeavour akin to that approach of cosmology that developed fairly recently in physics. The 'anthropic' approach is very different from the tra­ ditional scientific approach in which the observer played no role. In light of this new framework, coincidences and 'accidents' have taken on new meaning and it has become clear that the balance of celestial forces may depend on the presence of human observers. Suddenly we, as observers, have become cognizant of our crucial role in determining the nature of our reality.8 Bill Vazan is a creative artist, not a physicist, but he is still an adherent to the Anthropic principle. The Cosmic Dance is also relevant for Vazan's work, albeit in a more poetic than literal sense. If we approach Vazan's work without presupposi­ tions about either its genealogy or its context, we see how effectively it functions as a potent analogy for this Cosmic Dance. The line of demarcation between his shamanic practice and the exploration of the subatomic world is not so disparate as to be mutually exclusive. If some readers find this far-fetched, it's worth noting that the most telling metaphor for the Cosmic Dance is not to be found in elaborate scientific theorems from a related discipline but in the belief-context of Hinduism, and the dancing god Shiva. Shiva, a primordial god, is the King of Dancers in Hinduism. The religion posits that all existence is part of an infinite rhythmic progression of crea­ tion and destruction. The dance of Shiva repre­ sents this eternal rhythmic pattern of creation and destruction, of death and rebirth, which proceeds through endless cycles. Certainly, the linear ele­ ment in Vazan's sculptures and drawings enacts a continual cosmic dance of energy. A dynamic interplay between the line and the materiality of the stone surface is always apparent. This metaphor seems peculiarly appropriate for Vazan's work, given that both modern physics and eastern mysticism are equally opportune fodder for his mythologising endeavour. To see Vazan at work in his sandblasting lab at the Université du Québec à Montréal is to realise how modern is the technology he uses. Hunched

46 ESPACE 21 automne / fall 1992 over the huge girth of rock, wearing what looks other human pictorial allegories, for example the read in routed weathered stone, like a space helmet wreathed in sparks and recent series The Observed (1990-92) wherein a becomes our own myth, our own detritus, relentlessly working the surface, Vazan rendering of hands held up to the face in awe, folklore, the archetypal rendering resembles an astronaut looking out from his visor chagrin, surprise, or a glyph-like face registering of our own life-story. • onto an asteroid's surface, scoured and ravaged brooding, meditation, deep thought bear witness The above text is a precis and revision of under swirling, blistering clouds of dust, debris to the universality of the sculptor's endeavour. the author's catalogue essay that accompa­ and electric discharges. As Vazan says, if by the There is a superlative balance that is just as effec­ nied his recent survey of Bill Vazan's work of the last 5 years. The exhibition, at the mid-20lh century the Western mind-set was suf­ tive in invoking the dynamic balance of creation Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, fused with an 'aerial view,' then by the end of the and destruction in the world. Vazan's work is red­ will be open through September 6, 1992. century, it will be suffused with planetary probes olent of this cosmic dance — whether it be and scans (as in this artist's photoworks). Shiva's dance or the dance of subatomic matter. 1 Paul Heyer, "Cosmography in a New Indian artists of the twelfth century represented Context," Bill Vazan: Recent Land and Photoworks (Montreal: Musée d'art Shiva's cosmic dance by figures with four arms VI. contemporain, 1980), p. 28. whirling in a relentless dynamism that symbolised In the end, we find Vazan's endeavour, his own 2 Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal the unity of all Existence. Vazan has recourse to picturing of the world, a sort of visual storytelling, Return, trans. Willard R. Trask (London: as John S. Dunne Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1954), p. 76. 3 Ibid., p. 77. defined it: 4 Ibid., p. 4. There is some pro­ 5 See Julian Jaynes, The Origin of found link, it seems, Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston: Houghton between the story of a Mifflin Company, 1976), pp. 325-326. man's life and the 6 Ibid., p. 321. story of his world. The 7 For a full and fascinating account of the story of his world is latest discoveries in physics, see Paul Davies and John Gribbin, The Matter his myth, the story in Myth (New York: Simon & Schuster / which he lives, the Touchstone, 1992). greater story that 8 See Paul Davies, "Speculations: The Anthropic Principle" in Science Digest, encompasses the story October, 1983, p. 24. of his life. To discover 9 John S. Dunne, Time and Myth: A his myth he must go Meditation on Storytelling as an deeper into his life Exploration of Life and Death (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, than he would if he 1975), p. 50. were going to tell only 10 Wallace Stevens, "A Mythology his life story .^ Reflects Its Region" in The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Bill Vazan always Play, edited by Holly Stevens (New goes deeper into his York: Vintage Books, 1972), p. 398. life than he would if he were only going to tell his own life-story. L'oeuvre de l'artiste montréalais Bill Vazan révèle une conscience sociale As the poet Wallace et environnementale importante, de Stevens wrote: "The même qu'une compréhension image must be of the profonde de l'art conceptuel et du nature of its creator. / land art. La démarche de Vazan, It is the nature of its tant au niveau du pictural qu'à celui du sculptural, s'inspire d'une creator increased, / gamme très riche de sources, allant 0 Heightened."' Vazan de la mythologie primitive à la attempts to rediscover physique contemporaine. Dans les the world of his own sculptures de Vazan, le passé et le beginnings; and suc­ futur se rejoignent. La narrativité des oeuvres témoigne d'une ceeds in heightening volonté constante de l'artiste de its impact and making redécouvrir ses origines premières, that world new and à la fois qu'elle réussit à recréer, provocative for us. par les sillons gravés dans la pierre usée, l'aspect mythique, If, in his recent folklorique, et archetypal de sculptures and draw­ l'histoire de tout être. ings, he achieves intrinsic universality, it is not because of the resemblance between that story and the pri­ Bill Vazan, Momento Mori #1. Engraved metamorphic granite from Observed. Made meval world of the in Tamworth, Ontario. May 1992. Photo : ancient myths, but B. Vazan. because of the resem­ blance between his -4-4- story and our own. Bill Vazan, Night Edge, 1991. Engraved The rediscovered nar­ bohemian granite. H. : 2,8 m. Installation in rative, written and Vystaviste Park, Prague. Photo : B. Vazan.

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